…So the UK press aren’t allowed to call him a banker (!), or mention his infidelity with a married colleague.
However, since MP John Hemming mentioned the case under parliamentary privilege, you can get part of the story from the Telegraph:
He said: “In a secret hearing this week Fred Goodwin has obtained a super-injunction preventing him being identified as a banker.
“Will the government have a debate or a statement on freedom of speech and whether there’s one rule for the rich like Fred Goodwin and one rule for the poor?”
Leader of the House Sir George Young said a forthcoming Westminster Hall debate would explore freedom of speech, adding: “I will raise with the appropriate minister the issue he has just raised.”
The terms of the injunction are so strict that the Daily Telegraph cannot reveal the nature of the information that Sir Fred Goodwin is attempting to protect.
…and deduce the rest from this, which used to be online at the Daily Mail, but has, um, been taken down:
A senior executive at a bank bailed out by taxpayers has taken out a gagging order to prevent a newspaper from revealing his affair with a colleague.
The High Court privacy ruling is likely to fuel public anger surrounding controversial decisions which allow the rich and famous to silence reporting and criticism of scandals.
In what will be seen as another blow to free speech, judge Mr Justice Richard Henriques sided with the married banker.
His decision is the latest in a string of similar court orders taken out to cover up scandals.
They are frequently used by stars and Premiership footballers on multi-million pound salaries, with the money to ‘buy’ them.
The banker, who is paid a substantial six figure sum, began the illicit affair before the credit crunch erupted and plunged the country into recession, The Sun reported.
He was present when the Government was forced to inject almost £1trillion into propping up the banks.
Now thousands are losing their jobs amid swingeing cuts.
One bank insider told the paper: ‘Given what was going on at the time they got together, I’m surprised either of them had the time or the energy.’
In the words of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, informed that an MP had been caught sodomizing a Guardsman under a tree, on the coldest night of the decade:
Makes you proud to be British
Hardy and underrated British sexual appetite may be a source of quiet pride; British press freedom, less so. More on superinjunctions, which used to be called gag orders, here.
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Sorry to drag down the level of conversation, but after reading the word adulterous I assumed that “superinjunction” was some sort of double entendre.
If everything, including justice and freedom are for sale to those very few who own all the money, then money is irrelevant to that huge part of humanity which has little or no money by comparison.
We had better recognise that money is the God of the very rich, and by worshiping their God (money) we doom ourselves and all future generations. The very rich cannot give up their God and the rest of us will never be admitted to the inner sanctum.
I don’t advocate Holy War. Let them keep their money. We need to build our own.
We need to build our own. Paul Repstock
Yep. And the progressives have shot themselves in the foot with the income tax, the capital gains tax and other means that were designed to get them a share of the loot. Instead those things have made it impossible to escape the looting by forcing all of US, one way or another, to use FRNs.
And so I once more propose separate government and private money supplies in accord with Matthew 22:16-22. It is morally impossible for only a single money supply to serve both sectors since one is based on force and the other on voluntary cooperation.
But if we don’t then the danger is that gold-bugs will force us into using gold and silver as money which is silly, environmentally destructive, wasteful, fascist and hardly likely to be optimal for economic growth anyway.
Paul Repstock said: “If everything, including justice and freedom are for sale…”
Well the UK and US aren’t quite as bad as Mexico yet, but they’re sure getting there.
In Mexico City, thanks to the wonderful consultation that the city government paid Rudolf Guiliani over $1 million for back in 2003, the government offers a reward to the police for each suspect they apprehend.
So let’s say somebody hits you over the head and steals your wallet. The policeman who catches the guy gets a $400 approx reward. However, if the perp is willing to pay the policeman $1,000, he lets him go. But if you are willing to pay $1000 to the policeman (or the prosecutor), plus the $500 he gets thanks to Guiliani, then the police detain him again. But if the perp is willing to up his offer, let’s say to $2,000, then if you want him brought to justice you have to increase your offer. So the police (and the prosecutors) get the victim and the perp into these bidding wars to see who will pay the most.
Of course if a policeman comes up short of cash at the end of the month, he can just haul in some innocent person, or someone who stole a package of chewing gum, to u his reward´money.
What you end up with is prisons full of innocents or petty offenders who lacked the money to buy off the criminal justice system (police, prosecutors and judges all get in on the action), and the real criminals walk the streets with impunity.
People in the UK and US don’t have any idea how bad it can get. But something tells me they’re fixin’ to find out.
For you DS.
Homefront:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5yyWZ2Z6Ps
So, okay….
They were tired.
So the sex just wasn’t that great…
I mean, really. Who would want THAT in the press, eh?
Worth every farthing that !=bankster paid for the privilege of having the judge instruct the press to keep mum.
After all, who needs headlines that read: “Banker hooks up with married friend, both have lousy sex while economy destructs”? That would just be humiliating.
I realize he’s not a bankster.
But could we call him a !=bankster?
So far, the judge doesn’t seem to have ruled against that ;-)
Apologies for failing to elucidate the != bit.
In some computer scripts, “NOT equal to” is designated as !=
My point being that the banker does NOT want to be identified as a ‘banker’.
He claims that he is ‘not equal to’ a banker.
In many computer scripts, he is therefore !=banker.
Think of it as Open Source bullshit-calling.
It may not sit well with the !=banker, but I find it rather a pleasant way to amuse myself at his expense.
Loved the post.
Hysterical ;-)
A unary negation would be like this in C:
!banker
I’ll settle for something more prosey like “unbanker.”
#define banker false
works on so many levels.
I thought this might be a fun thread ;-)
While I agree with propertius, I think ScottS’s ‘unbanker’ might get more traction.
What about unBanker?
Truly, I think the blogs need a fun meme for these !banker cads.
Any votes for unBanker?
Me prefers…..Generational Financing Ass Bandit
“…after reading the word adulterous I assumed that “superinjunction” was some sort of double entendre.”
Add “gag orders” to the mix , and you’ve got two doubles.
Is there such a thing as a quadruple entendre ?
Banker? BANKER? This solid citizen doesn’t want to be identified as a banker? That has to be a misprint. Clearly, he is objecting to being identified as a bankster, that is, a crooked banker, which of course, he is. But here at NC, we believe folks should obey the law. Thus, I recommend that all law abiding citizens of Great Britain simply refer to Mr. Goodwin as “a prominent asshole”, “skallywag”, or simply “Shyster.”
Have the terms “scoundrel”, “blackguard”, “bounder”, and “villain” fallen so far out of favor?
And “supermalfunction” was “getting caught short” returning to the world of finance!
We are all adulterous failed bankers now.
Superinjunction? Perhaps next he can be subject to a Megaindictment, or maybe an Ultrakick-in-the-ass.
“The banker, who is paid a substantial six figure sum, began the illicit affair before the credit crunch erupted and plunged the country into recession,”
This story is full of holes (no pun intended).
To wit:
How could a six figure sum be substantial to a banker?
Why would this banker’s sex life be news if there were no drugs or prostitutes involved?
If there were drugs and prostitutes involved, why is that being covered up with this planted story about a romantic affair?
Who were the prostitutes and can we see them topless in the English Press?
What drugs were involved and how much of them?
If the drugs and prostitutes weren’t charged to the bank’s expense accounts, why not?
How much of that 1 trillion bailout was spent on drugs and prostitutes?
Why is this fellow’s encounter deemed newsworthy when someone like me would get no PR at all even if I went out on the town and picked up Lindsey Lohan and took her home to see my etchings and she stayed happily all night long?
The more I think about this, the crazier and more unfair it seems.
When it’s hourly, of course.
Well done, well done! I almost spilled my morning coffee!
“Makes you proud to be British.” That’s our ‘Winny’, a master of the English language! LOL.
@ steelhead23.
I like the idea of “a prominent asshole” but om this side of the atlantic it ought to be “a prominent arsehole.” We are still two nations divided by a common language.
We are just so clever in this old country the way we nowadays dish out knighthoods: Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Alan Greenspan. Which arsehole makes these decisions?
Maybe Sir Fred should change his name to avoid all scurrilous descriptors: Sir. Fred Goodfail. I mean, every media lawyer must know the Streisand Effect by now.
Ah, Sir Fred, the plunging, plunging! (I’m seeing footage of demolitions in slo-mo, towers being blown up, then mysteriously resurrecting…)
He used to be Fred the Shred, so can we call him Fred the Bed, now?
WTF?
UK still hasn’t muster the political kahunas to amend their stupid, overreaching, so-called “privacy” laws?
wow!
I guess it is an improvement over our National Security Letters, where everyone is verboten to even mention the existence of said Letter.
where, oh where, will we find another churchill?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/16/churchill/index.html
On the plus side, it seems to be generally accepted now that being a banker is at least as morally repugnant as adultery.
Sir Fred Goodwin had a homosexual affair. This is what he is trying to keep out of the press.
I suspect that what he really fears is the suggestion that shagging a colleague distracted him from his responsibilities…
Ah well, to be sung to the tune of “My old man’s a dustman”
Fred Goodwin is a banker,
He wears a bankers hat,
He saw all of your money,
And said “I’m having that!”
He shags his married colleagues
He shags the unwed too,
He shagged the banking system,
So he’s shagging me and you!
So a senior bank executive takes out a gag order to prevent a newspaper from revealing his affair with a colleague. And the bank was bailed out by taxpayers. Hyprocisy reigns supreme once again.